


Killers

by foxiea



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Beginnings of PTSD, Gen, Ishbal | Ishval, Ishval Civil War, Referenced Child Murder, Referenced Genocide, Reflection, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 05:17:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14909063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxiea/pseuds/foxiea
Summary: They can't shy away from what they've become.





	Killers

“I killed a child today,” she tells him, long after the fire has reduced to a pit of ash.

 

(He could have kept it going -- manipulated the oxygen and sparked it to ignition just so -- but he can’t snap his fingers without hearing the screams echo in his ears, without the acrid taste of death on his tongue.)

 

Six months ago he’d have been horrified.  

 

Six months ago he hadn’t killed a child either.

 

He used to wait by the coroner’s tent, counting each burned corpse they carried past; each sin he’d have to atone for.  It was the bodies of the children that taught him otherwise. One sin to one corpse was far from equivalent exchange.

 

Roy should reach out, cup her hands in his own, let her cry into his shoulder.  But the desert has put too much distance between them for that.

 

“I didn’t even-  He just ran out from behind a building and I-”

 

He can picture her, perched in her sniper's nest.  Rifle cocked and at the ready, muscle-memory finger on the trigger, a shot fired at the first sign of movement.  The body crumpling to the ground and then, through the scope, finally seeing.

 

She bites her lip, ducks her head before the words come out in a desperate whisper, “ _I didn’t mean to._ ”

 

And he knows she didn’t.  Soldiers were supposed to protect.  That’s why they’d joined the military in the first place.

 

“I know,” he says.

 

It still doesn’t change what they are now.

 

 _Killers_.

 

She looks up at him, her eyes impossibly soft. He could almost be a child himself, back at the Hawkeye Estate after she’d broken her father’s favourite teacup.  He’d transmuted it back together, but Berthold noticed the telltale marks his alchemy left behind. Riza reminds him of that cup now, her face marked with the lines of the battlefield even where she’s tried to cover up the cracks.  As an alchemist recognises transmutation marks, a soldier recognises battle scars.

 

She’s asking for forgiveness, but he can’t give it to her.  The only ones here who could are dead.

 

He drops his gaze to trace the curve of the circle on his glove, the lines that break off into triangles; how they intersect with the memory of the lines on Riza’s back, the power he promised he was worthy of.  

 

She’s asking him for forgiveness, but he’s the one who wronged her.

 

The first rays of dawn break over the horizon, glittering the sand beneath their feet.  They’ll be marching out before long. No matter how many innocents Roy burns for them, it’s never enough.

 

“You should get some sleep,” he tells her, “you’ll feel better afterwards.”

 

The corners of her eyes crinkle in disappointment.  She’s sharp enough, even in her grief, to know that he’s lying.

 

“Thank you for the suggestion, Sir.”

 

Her careful mask slips back on as she moves to stand.  Roy has to stop himself from reaching for her.

 

She doesn’t look back when she makes her way to her tent.  Perhaps it’s for the best.

 

Roy carefully removes his gloves, then dips his fingers into the still-hot ash of the fire pit.  The heat is enough to raise small welts against his skin, but it’s got nothing on being burned alive.

 

A light breeze picks up -- a rare thing in this godless place -- and sweeps the ash from his fingers.  It mingles with the desert sand, itself half ash already.


End file.
